Social media is more than a space for tagging your friends. Social networking sites are now digital environments suitable for marketing and business development.
Successful landlords and property managers can often attribute filled units and applicant surges to social media, which gathers and engages prospective tenants.
Maybe you already use social networking sites like Facebook Marketplace to advertise your rental property listings. This is an excellent use, but other social media sites are not designed for entire listings. Instead, you can utilize social media to generate interest in your business, increase community engagement, and ultimately build a positive reputation for your rental business.
Here are four tips for building your rental business’s reputation on social media.
1. Be Selective
Social networking sites are designed to be engaging and interactive. Because of their nature, it’s not in your best interests to tackle many of them at once.
Instead, select one or two sites to focus your efforts. For instance, maybe you decide to target Facebook and YouTube. Rather than juggling four or five different social media accounts, you can devote attention to generating quality content for just the few sites you deem most promising for your business.
Being selective is also important because social networking sites can differ vastly. Each has a different intended audience and therefore caters to different kinds of content.
For example, Instagram is often used by young adults and is an image-based platform. Companies often use the platform to work on branding and build community based on aesthetic appeal. Facebook has a broad range of users, but older adults are more likely to choose Facebook over other platforms.
It’s better to build a cohesive profile on one or two platforms than to try to maintain four or five accounts at a time.
2. Use High-Quality Photos and Visuals
Social networking sites are multimodal platforms. This means images and graphics are not only part of the platforms but expected on them.
For this reason, social media is an excellent opportunity to display the best photographs of your units, attractive graphics, video tours, gifs, clips, and any other visual content you have.
Your images don’t always need to be photos of your properties, but a few are obligatory. For these posts, be sure to use high-quality or professional photos. Utilize natural light and flattering angles of the most important rooms in the unit, including the kitchen, bedrooms, and bathrooms.
These same guidelines apply to videos as well. Video platforms like YouTube are an excellent place to build an archive of virtual tours, introductions, or other content that prospective tenants can browse in the future.
In addition to showcasing your units, you can also use social media to spread the word about discounts, renewals, community events, upgrades, and anything else noteworthy for current and prospective tenants. These kinds of posts can help you build a reputation as caring, involved, and engaged with your tenants.
3. Target Your Audience
As mentioned, social media sites can have vastly different audiences. Their users are not a static body or demographic but are constantly shifting.
Therefore, be mindful of audience expectations for each platform and choose platforms that your ideal tenants are already using.
For example, if you rent student housing, you should focus your attention on Instagram and perhaps also Facebook, where students’ parents are likely to see your posts.
Audience-specific content is integral to building a successful online reputation. The better your posts are suited to the platform or audience that sees them, the more prospective tenants will observe your flexibility and versatility online.
4. Integrate with Your Website and Property Management Software
Finally, integrate your digital assets for the best control and management of your content.
Integrating your social media profiles with your company website is an excellent way for prospective tenants who don’t use social media to keep in touch with what’s going on. This strategy is especially effective when you dedicate the bottom portion of your page to your posts across various accounts.
You may even be able to integrate your social media into your rental property management software account. Custom integrations on platforms like Buildium help you link software features and maintain consistency with your social media.
Get Social with Your Rental Business
Social media is an asset you can use to expand your rental business’s reach. By choosing a few sites, including appealing visuals, targeting an appropriate audience, and integrating with your website or software, you can easily form a positive reputation as a housing provider.
